


all things all at once

by disheveledcurls



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 09:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3204485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disheveledcurls/pseuds/disheveledcurls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what they get for falling from the skies: war, blood, hardship.</p><p>(He keeps thinking about her hands, which hold life and death and forgiveness all at once.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a law unto ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all! I'm so late with my fic but I'm trying to fix that. This one I should have posted a few weeks ago, considering we're getting a new episode tomorrow, but whatevs. Title is from the Tired Pony song by the same name. Feedback is obviously appreciated so whatever you think of this, do let me know. The fic is AU but it more or less follows canon events - it's sort of me filling in the blanks of what goes on behind the scenes. 
> 
> The first chapter is set more or less around episodes 2x05/2x06 ("Human Trials," "Fog of War"), with some flashbacks to 1x13 ("We Are Grounders, Pt. II.") Second chapter will be set around 2x08 ("Spacewalker") and its aftermath. The titles for both chapters 1 & 2 are fragments from the Snow Patrol song "The Weight of Love."
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy it!

_you slip into my arms_

_& you quickly correct yourself._

snow patrol, **the planets bend between us**.

 

_i chased your love ‘round a figure 8._

_i need you more than i can take._

ellie goulding, **figure 8.**

 

 

 

Okay, let’s see: she’s been over this already. At Mount Weather, she had nothing but time to spare, so she’s seen this through, burning painful tracks into her brain. She killed him. She killed them _._ She had a choice to make and she made it alone to the best of her ability because that’s how she happened to be at the time, and she shut up that dropship, and she rained down an inferno on whatever unfortunate soul happened to be outside. These are the facts she has been going over and over, like beads in a rosary, for the past few weeks: that she is a killer, that she lives she saved –the 47 now locked in a mountain– do not outweigh the ones she left behind, that her friends are, in all likelihood, dead, dust, ashes. She told herself all of this many times while at Mount Weather, just to make sure she didn’t go insane, just to keep herself grounded in reality, just so her waking world wouldn’t be infested with the stuff of her nightmares.

Because she dreamt of fire and smoke, night after night after night. She kept seeing it from different angles, as if her mind was in a cursed loop and just couldn’t give it a rest, kept trying to find a way out. _You can’t save everybody_ , Miller would say, and she would scream, and Bellamy would be a few steps away, losing the fight, and she would say, _He’s killing him_ , and Finn would catch her eye and just say _Go, go,_ and she would turn away with leaden feet, not even looking back to see where Bellamy was, not even daring to check whether he was dead already. It didn’t matter much. Once they fired the rockets, they would all be. On waking up that last conversation would replay itself endlessly, frenziedly inside her head, giving her a pounding headache. _You can’t save everybody,_ Miller had said, and Clarke could only think, _I have to_. She’d hear herself say, as if from a distance, _He’s killing him_ , but then she’d look around, shake herself awake, and remember, _No, I did that, I killed him_. The word _exhausting_ couldn’t even begin to cover what this train of thought felt like. Even now, at Camp Jaha, these thoughts won’t leave her, despite her mother’s attempts to soothe her.

So when she’s finally out of medical, talking to Raven, and she hears the whining of the gates being opened, and she first feels rather than sees him walk into camp, and she says his name as if she’s summoning him, a tiny desperate hope digs its claws deep into her heart but she tells herself, _No, you’re seeing ghosts, you killed him, remember?_ Yet her mother gets there first, and she’s talking to him, so unless her hallucinations are extremely powerful… Raven is already telling her to run ahead, and Clarke doesn’t bother letting logic taint and contradict her hopes. She flies onwards and crashes into him like a hurricane, so unexpectedly he actually staggers back with the force of the impact, and in the few seconds it takes him to wrap his arms around her in response, Clarke expects the worst and focuses on slowing her breathing and holding onto him as tight as she can and thinking very loud, and very hopeful, _Please don’t be a ghost and please don’t hate me_.  She feels his breath on her hair, then, his hands fitting neatly around her ribs, her upper back; Octavia is saying something she has no time to hear right now –some kind of joke, she guesses vaguely, from her tone–, and Bellamy does this odd thing where it’s almost like he was about to laugh against her ear but instead he lets out a sharp, shy breath, like he’s passing it off as a cough. Perhaps they’ve both been holding their breaths. His body is so steady against hers and when they draw apart the way he’s looking at her is unlike anything Clarke has ever seen or experienced, a breathless, wordless feeling that pulls the corners of their mouths upwards even when there’s such bad news to tell and so much to regret. She doesn’t stop to think about it, not with Raven close behind and Bellamy already asking about the others. Then she asks about Finn. No luck there either. When she suddenly realizes they made it to safety and so many of their people didn’t, it takes considerable effort not to snap, not to give in to the part of her that is laughing hysterically, not to say, _Aren’t we a couple of losers_. Right now, she’s pretty sure the three people standing by her are the only glue keeping her together.

     (She thinks she must have told herself _Screw you, I’m not afraid_ a million times while she was running for her life from the mouths of Hell, Anya in tow. Somehow it worked; she has to give the Blakes credit for it.) 

 

\---

Later, by the fire, she catches him watching her with that deep-set thoughtful frown, that tiny quirky smile impossibly soft and open like she never sees him around anyone else, except perhaps Octavia –although Bellamy and Octavia, she thinks, are fiercer, more bittersweet, always clashing or mocking or terribly, terribly loving, but not usually soft like this–, and a million words catch in her throat, perhaps the same she couldn’t say last time she saw him, perhaps the same that went round and round in her brain for days _. He’s killing you. No, I killed you. You can’t save everybody. I have to. I have to. I couldn’t._

 “Last time I saw you, you were closing the dropship door,” he says. It’s not an accusation:  there’s absolutely no blame on his face, no pain that she can read, only a frown and a faint curving of his mouth upwards, as if he’s just said something vaguely humorous.

 She looks away, feeling, nonetheless, that she has to apologize now, somehow, although she’s not sure if she can. No matter how many times she’s thought about what happened, it seems she’s never going to be ready for this conversation. _I’m so sorry I couldn’t bring them back_ , she’s about to say. _I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you_. Maybe she should approach this from another angle, crack some kind of desperate joke about being lousy leaders. But she looks at what they’ve both done, their hands a permanent red, and it doesn’t seem right to joke about it.

He catches up to her thoughts at once and says, “Had to be done,” as matter-of-factly as you say _We’re missing blankets_ or _It’s cold outside._

She turns the words over in her mouth. _Had to be done._ They taste like forgiveness, given without a second thought, without request. He tells her about Finn, another monster he believes he’s responsible for letting loose, and she immediately hands him his words back, not like a present you reject unopened, but like a last piece of bread, better shared than hoarded. Forgiveness is one thing they can give each other, apparently. If nothing else, forgiveness. She thinks that’s plenty. She’s not sure how it came to be this way –how they went from strangers to enemies to uneasy allies to co-leaders–, but she’s so grateful for him, so relieved to have him by her side.

The stubborn set of his mouth doesn’t change, like he doesn’t quite believe her reassurances, but he doesn’t stop looking at her, and she thinks that’s a start.

(He has saved her life and all of their lives countless times, and she’s let him go around calling himself a monster and she closed the door to safety right on his nose. She is sick to her stomach.)

\---

The first time she actually attempts to have this conversation is the night after they find Finn in the middle of a Grounder village, surrounded by his victims. His reluctance to even acknowledge the fact that he massacred eighteen innocents scares and revolts her to the point when she actually has to leave the room where they’re interrogating him, Bellamy following close behind. She lets him into her room and decides maybe it’s the right time to talk about what happened at the dropship, so they don’t have to discuss the possibility that one of their close friends might be a mass murderer. Yet the longer she paces restlessly around the tent under his vigilant gaze, trying to summon up the courage to speak, the harder it becomes. 

“You did good,” he says, like he’s reading her mind. It doesn’t even surprise her anymore that he can see through her so easily. It would surprise her if he didn’t.

She shakes her head many times and purses her lips tight so as to keep from sobbing, tells herself she does not deserve the kindness in his face, in his words.

 “I did not,” she replies, a slow-burning kind of fury drawing her gaze to his. “I did wrong.”

“What was wrong about saving our people?” He looks puzzled. “You kept them safe.”

“I left _you_ out,” she says, enunciating each word carefully. If she can manage one whole sentence after another without breaking down, maybe she can get through this. It doesn’t seem to work. Her voice cracks. “I left you _for dead_. I did _wrong_.”

She hates how easily he shrugs it off, rolling his eyes, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Princess, it was the right call. You saved 47 people.”

“–and I didn’t save _you_ ,” she interrupts, looking miserable. “It was the wrong call. I should’ve waited for you. I should’ve –” She looks around desperately, as if she could find the answer, belatedly, inside these four walls. “I should’ve figured something out.”

He raises a questioning eyebrow. She wipes a hand across her eyes, where tears are already welling up. “You would have saved me,” she says, in a frenzy of conviction. “You would have done something.”

“Of course,” he replies, not missing a beat. “But it wasn’t you that got dragged away at the last minute, it was just me.” One corner of his mouth curls upward, barely. “We could never spare you, princess. But me…” He trails off with a self-deprecating shrug, like it’s blatantly obvious. _I’m a monster_ , etcetera. “It wasn’t worth it risking more lives going after me. It was the right decision.”

No one is more surprised than Clarke herself by the vehemence of her reaction. Her body is shaking, suddenly, her lungs struggling for breath, overcome with something that is both rage and demented laughter. Her legs give way beneath her, but he’s there before she can hit the floor, holding her up.

“Princess?”

“You fucking idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. IDIOT!” she says over and over, louder each time, punctuating each word by slamming a fist against his chest, uselessly, helplessly. She trashes in his arms but he doesn’t move, doesn’t complain, only holds her tighter, until she can regain a minimum of composure. She grabs his face and locks eyes with him, and says, slowly, as if to a child, “This better be the last time I have to say it.” She glares in warning. “You are _not_ a monster, and we _cannot_ spare you.”

He rolls his eyes. “I beg to differ.”

“You don’t _get_ to differ.”

He gives her the defiant look he always gives her when she’s being bossy, which she makes a point of ignoring. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t want you to say anything. I want you to let me apologize _for killing you_.”

He scoffs. “You did not kill me.”

“I did, though,” she says, with a pitiful smile, breaking again, and his face darkens in response. “I killed you, and I’m sorry, Bellamy. I should have saved you and I’m sorry, I’m _so_ sorry I can’t even breathe sometimes.”

Shyly, gracelessly, because he can think of no other response, he draws her hand to his chest, where his heart beats loud and clear under his threadbare shirt. “You didn’t kill me,” he repeats. “And if you need my forgiveness, you already have it. So breathe easy, princess.”

She almost laughs at this, at his impossible, timely tenderness, at what she knows –they know– it means. She does not laugh. She will not think of their essential, unspoken alliance. She will not even give it a name or let herself hope, because by now she knows the drill. Let the world know someone’s important to you, and they will be taken away. That’s just life down here.

 “I’ll breathe easy when you stop leaving me alone to make terrible choices.”

A grim smirk spreads across his face. “It’s hard running things.”

Now she does laugh, for isn’t that the understatement of the year.

“Come on,” he says, turning to the door. “That’s enough arguing for today. Let’s see if they got any booze at that food court thing they set up.”

She snorts derisively, following him out. “We still have to argue over the map I brought from Mount Weather. And at this point I’d settle for stale coffee.”

The look he gives her over his shoulder is mock-horrified. “The war really has broken you.”

She sniggers. “Well, we can’t all be you, Mr. Blake. Some of us are just weak.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes like she’s said something absurd, and she doesn’t care that she shouldn’t be joking, that she doesn’t really deserve to enjoy herself.

The world is always going to Hell. Maybe they can allow themselves a little joy while they’re still breathing.


	2. the weight of love

 

“For this was how Marya Morevna surmised that love was shaped: an agreement,

a treaty between two nations that one could either sign or not as they pleased.”

from _Deathless_ by C. M. Valente

 

_with your hands you could steady any vessel_

_and those hands wiped the blood from me._

tired  pony, **ravens and wolves.**

 

 

 

 

He keeps thinking about her hands, which hold life and death and forgiveness all at once.

\---

When she makes it back to camp, Raven has long screamed herself hoarse, and so cannot speak the myriad of insults stuck in her throat, cannot but shake herself free of the others’ grasp and come stumbling at her, furiously. Clarke’s body stiffens instinctively against Raven’s fists, which slam over and over against her chest, her arms, her face, and she takes the blows as still as a stone, not even bothering to defend herself, nor daring to put her arms around the girl. She only stands rooted to the spot and takes it, because after all, what’s a little pain, all things considered?

She thinks she hears, faintly, her mother’s voice, calling for help, in the distance, and wants to say _No, let her hurt me, let her kill me_ , but speaking right now seems beyond her. It feels like a long time has gone by, like being stoned to death under everyone’s impassive gaze, but it can’t have been more than a few seconds, because when she feels herself starting to falter under Raven’s relentless pummeling, it suddenly stops. Raven is pulled off of her, the crowd’s fill her ears, and she is swept off her feet and taken away in the arms of someone she instinctively recognizes must be Bellamy, because no one else would get in the way of a furious grief-stricken Raven for her sake. 

At first, she makes herself a dead weight in his arms by way of silent objection, but he only sighs, holds her tighter, and keeps walking, so she deems her passive resistance useless, like most of her tactics since they’ve been in this godforsaken planet.

She looks up and lets her eyes roam over his face slowly. He looks graver than usual. It takes her a moment to realize it must be because she just killed someone. It’s strange. It keeps slipping from her mind, even though it just happened. It’s like some kind of electric malfunctioning, a light bulb that won’t stay off no matter how many times you press the switch. Like one of those things you forget on a daily basis and surprise you later _. Oh dear, I left the window open. Damn, I forgot my keys again. Right, I killed Finn._ And when she remembers, she forgets to breathe, just for a second.

Bellamy doesn’t utter a single sound as he carries her, even though her eyes linger on his face, forwant of anything better to do. It must be annoying, she knows, being studied like that, but cannot bring herself to look away. Where would she look? Not into the dark mess inside herself, for sure. And it’s not like she hasn’t caught him doing the same –staring at her with something in his eyes she has no words for–, so she feels entitled to do a little gazing of her own. There’s a neat little cut on his eyebrow bone, she notices, bleeding fresh red. It hits her that he must have gotten that just now, that he must have gotten in the way of Raven’s fists, of a blow that was aimed at her. Her own hands fist into his shirt, her body going stiff again. She cannot stand any more blood today. He looks down at her, her sudden movement catching his eye. He doesn’t have to ask what she’s trying to bulletproof herself against. He, of all people, does not have to ask a single question.

One of her hands reaches up to his face, fingers grazing his wound tentatively. The tissue is already scarring, but her fingertips still come off red. She pushes down the nausea fighting its way up her throat and says, a little vague, a little dreamy, “You’re hurt.” She doesn’t say _, For me_ , because she doesn’t have to.

He shrugs like she knew he would. “It’s nothing,” he replies, and she hates, _hates_ the softness in his voice, the infinite tenderness in the way he puts a hand over her hand on his face and squeezes only once, only an instant, until she withdraws, shivering, because she has just killed one of her own people, one of their friends, and Bellamy has already forgiven her.

She never knew gratitude would feel like this, like joy and terror all at once.       

He leaves her in her makeshift bed, in her room. She figures without having to be told he will come back from time to time, when he’s not patrolling or checking on Octavia or Raven. She does not anticipate what he actually does, which is wait outside for hours, standing guard, as if there was nothing more important right now than to make sure she isn’t disturbed. In between fits of sleep, she feels him out there, hears his voice, low and warning, deterring potential visitors. When she does sleep, she dreams of blood, rivers of it, of screams that fill her head until there’s no room for her own voice, for her to explain _, I did what I could, I thought it was the right choice_. When she wakes, Bellamy is there, telling her she needs to eat something before she disappears off the face of the Earth, and she feels so glad, so very undeserving of the small mercies she is afforded.

He’s the one calling himself a monster, but she’s the one who murdered her kind-of-boyfriend, abandoned her friends inside a mountain to have their blood drained out of them, and breathed fire on her enemies. Clarke thinks this would be sort of funny, if it didn’t make her so furious.

At least if they’re both monsters they can keep each other company.

\---

“You can talk to me, sweetheart,” her mother says, for what she figures must be the hundredth time. She’s not really been paying much attention to anyone these days.

Abigail keeps talking, but Clarke isn’t listening, her eyes drifting lazily toward the door. Her mother’s gaze follows hers, but she can’t take –or decides to ignore– the hint, and instead places a comforting hand on her arm Clarke shakes off on instinct. A fleeting shadow of hurt passes over her mother’s face but the woman bears it bravely, her eyes hard as flint stone. Like mother, like daughter.

(At some point in the last few days, she started calling her mother Abigail inside her head, if nowhere else. She’s put up this – she wouldn’t call it a brick wall, let’s say a glass partition– between herself and the woman who raised her, and when she talks, Clark can see her face, her mouth moving, but the words come out muffled, unintelligible.

Actually, now that she thinks about it, the Abigail thing may have started earlier, when she found out her co-leader had been chained up and treated like a criminal, or when she and her mother talked about her father over a crackling radio and millions of miles of empty space. Maybe it started as early as Well’s confession in the woods, so long ago it feels like a dream. Whenever it happened, it doesn’t look like it’s going to change soon.)

“They’re here every day, you know,” Abigail says lightly.

 _They?_ Clarke has decided the less she talks, the less likely it is that she will unravel like a sweater once you’ve started pulling on a loose thread. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision as an intuitive defense mechanism, but it seems to be working out so far.

Her mother fills in the details for her, even though she hasn’t asked. “When you’re asleep,” she explains. “That boy and his sister.”

Something too drowsy to be outrage –and yet the sharpest thing she’s allowed herself to feel in days– stirs inside her, like a thorn you didn’t remember was in your side. _They have names_ , she thinks, but she keeps these names to herself like a secret her mother doesn’t deserve to be let in on. She doesn’t correct her mother, doesn’t waste her breath getting angry, doesn’t let herself wonder about Raven, who once waited outside her tent all night just to see if she was alright. She intends to simply ignore the remark, but curiosity gets the best of her.

“What do they look like?”

Abigail’s eyes widen. She probably can’t believe her daughter is even addressing her. “What?”

“My friends,” Clarke says patiently. She still won’t give her their names. “When they come visit me, what do they do? What do they look like?”

Her mother’s eyes flutter briefly, like they always do when she’s thinking. “The girl talks. She sits by the bed and tells you stories.”

Clarke is afraid to ask, so she doesn’t. She hates the smug look on her mother’s face, like she knows something without needing to be told by Clarke herself. “The boy stands and fidgets a lot. He doesn’t talk. He just stands there like he’s waiting for you.” _Like he’s waiting for instructions_ , she almost says. She’s figured out her daughter and this boy have some sort of working partnership going on, the extent of which is unknown to her.

There’s a knot in Clarke’s throat _. Of course_ , she thinks fondly. What else would they do? That’s the Blakes if she’s ever known them.

Someone’s calling for her mother, saying she’s needed elsewhere. Abigail gives her a tight smile, pats her hand. Clarke looks away, recoils, shoulders hunched as if she could fold her body inwards and disappear into it.

It’s not that she hates her mother. It’s just that at a time like this, few people are welcome. Abigail isn’t one of them. Besides, she doesn’t need her mother’s report. She sleeps much less than she seems to, these days. She could recount every single little anecdote Octavia has told her, has heard the siblings have furious whispered arguments about whether or not Raven would come, has felt their touch.  (Octavia always kisses her cheek before leaving, Bellamy sometimes holds her hand in both of his.) Only because she’s faking sleep, she can’t move, can’t speak, can’t open her eyes, can’t see their faces. That’s what she misses the most, being locked up in here by herself. Talking to her people, looking at them, being among them. This need is by far greater than her grief.  Besides, the 47 in Mount Weather are still waiting.

She has work to do. Mourning is a luxury she can’t afford.

 

\---

“I’m going to the woods,” Bellamy says one day, seemingly to no one in particular, as he stands by her bed while she fakes sleep. It doesn’t take a mind-reader to understand it’s an invitation. He turns away to leave, but right before he’s out the door, she speaks.

“I’ll find you,” she says.

\---

Her brother and Clarke walk ahead, side by side, in that quietly intimate way everyone’s grown used to by now. Octavia watches them sometimes, when they’re standing aside, deliberating in hushed voices, like an innermost war council –the determination in both their faces, the strength in Clarke’s eyes, the loyalty in Bellamy’s–, and she’s struck by how natural it all looks, like they have always known each other, always been in each other’s pockets, chasing each other’s tails. Occasionally her brother will smirk down at Clarke, or she will hold his hand, and it’ll feel wrong to watch, almost like she’s intruding in something too private, too _theirs_ to witness. Octavia was surprised in these instances to feel not jealousy but a strange kind of relief.

Now, Octavia follows close behind, watching for signs of danger. Just because they’ve recently bought themselves a costly truce, it doesn’t mean they’re taking any chances. Besides, they knew from day one the Grounders were hardly the only thing on this planet to worry about. Not to mention it’s the first time Clarke has been in the woods –or anywhere outside her room and the medical bay– in over a week, so no one’s really sure what to expect. If there’s one thing Octavia can tell you for sure, it’s that the strongest tend to fall the hardest.

She marvels often at the way this new life has come about, the facts they now take as a given which would have been nothing but fever dreams a few months ago: living on Earth after centuries of space walking, breathing real air, and, as far as she’s concerned, roaming this world free, having no boundaries. (Octavia remembers, from time to time, that she was the first person to step foot on the Earth and can’t quite believe it. Octavia Blake, a child who lived under the floor in a cold cell up above floating in the vast lifeless space for most of her life: illegal child turned falling star turned explorer turned victor. The girl who never had anything. The girl who always had something no one else had: a brother. The girl who says _Screw you, I’m not afraid_. The girl that first stepped on the Ground. The girl that fell in love with the Ground. That’s who she is.  Again, she can’t quite believe it.)  

Octavia also marvels at the strange companionship Clarke and her brother have come to share, equal parts stubbornness and faith and passion. She’s glad Bellamy has found someone who’ll stick with him through thick and thin by choice, and not only –as it has been for her sometimes– because blood ties are a duty in themselves. The fact of her brother’s understated yet undeniable happiness down here; the fact of having found Lincoln at her darkest hour… Wonders truly never cease.

 

There’s a sudden sound of twigs snapping. Octavia whirls around, blade raised, searching the trees ahead for enemies, but it is only Clarke, who, by the looks of it, must have lost her footing on the steep hillside and been left hanging by a thread from Bellamy’s hand. Octavia can guess all this from the tension in her brother’s face and shoulders, the incredible delicacy with which he’s still holding onto Clarke’s wrists after having pulled her to her feet, as if frozen into place and unable to let go. Bellamy’s eyes scan Clarke’s face anxiously; then he does something Octavia could have predicted but never expected, which is to swiftly, helplessly draw Clarke into the circle of his arms, burying his face on the crook of her neck, one hand flying to the back of her head, the other on her back. Not only does it feel surreal, topsy-turvy –like he’s the one that needs protection–, but it also gives Octavia a strong feeling of déjà-vu, having been where Clarke is a hundred times.

(She’s weirdly unbothered by the fact that her brother has yet another person to protect. From the moment the whole co-leadership business began, Octavia knew her brother had finally met his match. She figured he’d make it a priority to keep Clarke close and safe, that they would have to open their little family to her, draw her in, build a complicated protection around her. She’s okay with that. She likes Clarke. Besides, she can’t _wait_ to laugh at her brother for being a lovesick puppy.)   

Neither of them is talking, but Clarke holds on tight, when Octavia thought she may pull away. She thinks she can see her brother whispering something, breathing a sigh of relief. She makes an effort to read his lips. _You scared me, princess_ , she thinks he’s saying, _Don’t do that again_. Clarke nods repeatedly, her lips pressed tight, as if she were scared of what she might say if she opens her mouth, and briefly touches her forehead to his. Then they pull apart. Bellamy extends an arm as if asking Clarke to lead the way.

Octavia’s heart breaks because she knows her brother would take a bullet for this woman, but he is not going to let himself hold her hand.   

\---

On her first day back in medical, Clarke is assigned to run a check-up on a tallish, pretty dark-haired girl she thinks she’s never seen before.  She strains her memory for clues, even though she knows she can’t possibly know everyone in camp. She must know her, she reasons, only she can’t remember where from. Then, as the girl holds her forearm arm up in order to have her sling replaced, Clarke suddenly remembers her, through a haze, as if it had been in another lifetime.

“You’re that girl,” she blurts out before she can’t help herself. “The one that came with Bellamy some weeks ago. He and Murphy and Monroe, they brought you here, didn’t they?” The girl nods.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke says, “I don’t know your name.”

“I’m Mel.”

 “Clarke.”

Mel gives her a funny appraising look. She has big, smart eyes, sharp cheekbones, a smallish full mouth that loses some of its severity when she gives Clarke a small smile and says, without being prompted, “It was Bellamy who saved me.”

Clarke feels a tiny irrational pang of jealousy, perhaps even envy. She shoves it away to the back of her mind. “Saved you? Why, what happened?”

Mel looks away, one graceful arm folded over her chest as she speaks. “I was hanging from a branch off a cliff face,” she explains. “I heard voices. I screamed for help. I heard arguing. Someone was saying that there was no time because they had to go look for their friends, that they should come back later for me…” She trails off, and Clarke’s heart sinks when she realizes it must have been Finn saying all those things.

“Sterling tried first,” Mel goes on, with a heaviness that Clarke immediately recognizes as guilt. “He fell. The others started arguing again, and Bellamy said they had to save me, that they didn’t know about their friends, but that they had to try to save me. ‘We could save this one girl.’ That’s what he said.” She pauses, terror and wonder flickering in her face. “Bellamy himself had to come and get me.” She shakes her head, scoffs. “Between the fall and the makeshift rope and the Grounders coming at us, it’s a wonder we didn’t all get killed.”

Clarke’s hands give a belated nervous twitch, as if she’d been there, helplessly watching him hang by a thread with this girl in tow. She tells herself she should have been there indeed. She should have done a great deal of things.  She holds onto the supplies table to steady herself, gives the girl a tight-lipped, perfunctory smile. “The Blakes are tough little things,” she says knowingly, fondly, thinking of Octavia, tiny and fierce and fearless. _Octeivia kom Skaikru_. She doesn’t let herself think of Bellamy. She doesn’t have to. “They’ll survive anything.”

Mel smiles, looks a little less lost. “I keep thinking about what he said when he saw me,” she says softly, her eyes far away. “He said I was strong and I said I wasn’t, only stubborn, so he said I should be stubborn a little longer, and I did and now I’m alive.” The last word is almost a whisper, almost as if she didn’t believe it. “He said he wouldn’t let me die and he didn’t.”

Clarke falters, Mel’s words ringing in her ears, hitting a little too close to home. A grim smile makes its way onto her face without reaching her downcast eyes.

 “Good advice,” she mumbles, eventually, helping the girl to stand down from the table where she’s been examining her. “You’re free to go.”

Mel hesitates. “You’re her friend, right?”

Caught about to spin on her heel and leave, Clarke is stilled to the spot. _Friend_ is too small a word, but she hasn’t settled on another that fits best, partly because she’s terrified of addressing the issue. “Yeah, why?”

“Will you tell him I say thank you?” Mel wrings her hands anxiously.  “I wouldn’t want to bother him, but if you could find him when he’s not busy and just thank him again for me…” She falls silent, eyes full of quiet expectation. “He saved my life,” she adds, as if her motives needed further clarification.

Clarke feels her heart swell and swell like a balloon about to burst with a feeling she’s slow to recognize as pride. “Of course he did,” she mutters, almost to herself. He’s been playing guardian angel ever since that goddamn radio that meant 300 lives on his shoulders, ever since Murphy and Charlotte, maybe even since Jaha, since Octavia and his mother, trying his best to save everybody as if that could somehow make it alright, wash the blood off his hands for good. Clarke knows it won’t, because it doesn’t work like that, but she knows he’ll keep trying and God, she can’t breathe thinking about it, she can’t put a name on that feeling.

“I’ll tell him,” she promises, and Mel nods, leaves her alone.

\---

“Mel sent me to thank you,” she says, later, when she finds him near the edge of camp, chopping wood.

He looks back at her over his shoulder, a slight frown on his face. “The girl from the cliff?”

“The girl from the cliff,” she confirms. “She’s pretty,” she says then, not really knowing why.

“Is she?” Bellamy shrugs, not taking the hint. “Why didn’t she come herself?”

“Apparently she’s too polite,” she explains. “Personally, I think you intimidate her.”

Bellamy turns around, studies her face to see if she’s joking, then snorts in derision, as if she’s said something ridiculous. He shakes his head. “I’ll check on her tomorrow.”

The way he says it reminds her of a father, laughing at the sheer nonsense of being thanked by his children for something simple, like tying a shoelace or sewing on a missing button. What else could a father do but take care of his own? Clarke feels a tugging at her heartstrings, feels the urge to say, _I did that, I made you into a savior, I made you care_ , but she doesn’t say a thing, only stands there with her hands in her pockets.

“You alright over there, princess?” he asks eventually, axe now still at his feet so he can hear her reply.

Though his back is turned, she would swear his eyes are downcast, his whole body stiffening against a slight tremor that runs down his back, clenches his fists and jaw. There’s so much concern in his voice she finds it both heartbreaking and infuriating. She wants to shake him, to yell at him, _Can’t you see I have no right to this kindness_. She clenches and unclenches her own fists. “Yup,” she says through gritted teeth.

He twists around to look at her, opens his mouth as if to question her, then shakes his head. “Wanna help me chop wood?”

It throws her off. Ever since Finn everyone’s been treating her like a child, or worse, like a basket case, so it takes her a moment to figure out how to react. “Why?”

Bellamy shrugs. “I feel like you’d appreciate hitting something with an axe right now.”

Clarke smiles, an actual full smile that tugs the corners of her mouth upwards before she can fight it back. It feels like ages since she’s smiled, like her face had been frozen into place. A vivid memory comes rushing back to her of standing in a dirty old bunker with him, learning to shoot, watching him smirk as she admitted to liking it. She shakes her head. It was a lifetime away. She feels so old, suddenly, so tired. “Thanks, I’m good.”

Bellamy nods, folding his face into a little sardonic grin, like he’s beratinghimself for even having made the offer. He finishes up with the wood, puts down the axe, wipes the sweat off his brow with a corner of his shirt. “C’me on,” he says, turning around, falling into step beside her. “I’ll walk you to your room.” Clarke hears _I’ll walk you home_ , but it can’t be. She doesn’t know where home is, wouldn’t let herself dream of it anyway. They walk in their usual comfortable silence, his hands knotted at his back like a soldier’s, her hands in her pockets. When they reach her unit, he holds the door open for her and waits, looking like he wants to say something but he doesn’t dare to, and she’s suddenly terrified. These days, she’s always waiting for the others to turn their backs on her, to cut her loose, to say she did wrong and doesn’t deserve to walk among them.

He’s shaking his head. “G’night, princess,” he says, his voice so soft she finds it hard to meet his eyes. He must know she’s watching him leave, because he calls over his shoulder before disappearing around the corner.

“Hey princess?”

“Yeah?”

“If you feel like trashing someone, you know where to find me,” he says, and Clarke could laugh.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says easily, the longest sentence she’s uttered in days. _Meet Bellamy Blake_ , she thinks, _the world’s friendliest punching bag_.

(Clarke isn’t vain, never has been. She never asked for any of this, for others to take the fall for her, but it’s like a snowball effect that’s been set in motion and she can’t stop it, can’t see an end to it. Boys keep throwing themselves in front of bullets, in front of bad news for her, and Clarke only wants them to live. She’s fucking tired of seeing red.)

\---

Clarke does not want to have this conversation, but if it has to happen, she’s glad she’s having it with Bellamy, of all people. “It was mercy,” he says at once, when she brings up the subject, his words a mere statement of facts, a kind of _racconto,_ as if they were simply resuming a conversation or picking up where the dialogue left off inside their heads. Clarke hates that he trusts her so blindly, so completely.

“Was it?” She’s sitting very still. If she can’t do this calmly, she can’t do this at all. The more she thinks about it, the more convinced she is that what she did to Finn happened for reasons far more complicated than mercy alone. That maybe there were rage and shame and terror coursing through her at the time. That maybe it wasn’t mercy, exactly, what made her kill Finn, as much as it would help to think so. That maybe she’s a better liar than she’d like to admit.

 “I didn’t forgive him,” Clarke says, out loud for the first time, and the truth of it hits her like a blow to the head. “So I don’t know about mercy.”

She can feel Bellamy shifting beside her, arms around his folded knees. “Forgiveness and mercy are different things,” he says, very carefully.

True, Clarke concedes, but she doubts that it was actually either of those things that drove the blade between Finn’s ribs. She thinks she can read between the lines what he’s getting at: that forgiveness is a path, mercy a choice, or that mercifulness is who she is, even if she wasn’t ready to forgive Finn before he died. She shakes her head, keeping her voice as even as possible. “I couldn’t have done that for you,” she whispers, apropos of nothing, so low she thinks she hasn’t really said it out loud, until she feels him still beside her. “I couldn’t have done that for Raven or Octavia or Wells.”

He nods gravely. “But you loved him more.”

She shakes her head again. “I don’t think that’s how it works. I think it’s the other way around.” She wipes her eyes. “I either did what I did because I loved him less, or because I hated him, deep down, because I couldn’t forgive him.” She senses he’s holding back a retort. “I can’t decide which one it is,” she says, breaking, just as she feels Bellamy’s hand come to rest on top of hers, tethering her to the woods and the water and the sunlight and the air going in and out of her lungs. She’s alive and it’s her fault Finn is not. She has to find a way to live with it.

“I don’t think it matters,” he says eventually, ever the pragmatist. “You gave him a quick merciful death at the hands of someone he loved,” he says, his eyes fixed somewhere across the water. “We could all do a lot worse.”A faint, sad grin plays with the corners of his mouth.

“Did _you_ forgive him?”

Her inquisitive gaze is trained on him in that relentless way she has when she’s being Princess-Who-Takes-No-Shit. “Does it matter what I think?”

She tilts her head to the side, one corner of her mouth barely upturned. “Of course you didn’t,” she says knowingly. She rubs at her eyes with the back of her hands, lets out a deep sigh. “I knew it. I knew I felt so shitty for a reason. I lied to a dead man. Brilliant.”

He frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“You said it yourself.” She turns her eyes away. “He died thinking I loved him, that I forgave him, that I was being merciful. All things I couldn’t possibly say for sure now. That makes me a liar aside from a murderer.”

“It makes you a good person,” Bellamy says quietly.

Clarke has no answer to that. Somehow she keeps finding herself alone with this boy, having the same conversation over and over, and for some reason, he’s always letting her off the hook. She twines her fingers into his, stays silent, doesn’t let go.

 "Some lines you can't uncross," she says, like she hasn't heard him.


End file.
